Global Coffee Updates: July 2021

By Oliver Stormshak

July 2021 is upon us. This is a busy month of change in the roastery at Olympia Coffee. We have a large change over based on seasonality. Many of our coffees harvested in 2020 are now running out and our new crop 2021 harvested coffees from north of the Equator are coming in. There might be a few days to a couple of weeks where our coffee menu will be a little slimmer than usual, but just remember that fresh coffees are arriving weekly.


Colombia:
We have had a dramatic few months in Colombia with protests about tax changes in the country. Safety and logistics are beginning to improve daily. This is also the peak coffee harvest month throughout the country. We have been receiving samples each week from our sourcing projects in San Sebastian, San Fermin, and Narino. We also have coffee shipping towards us from Colombia at the moment, and we have coffee in warehousing in California waiting for their moment on our menu.

Here in the roastery, we are currently roasting Fernando Ordonez’s Micro-Lot, as well as the beloved San Sebastian Reserva. Both of these offerings will sell out in July. We will also be featuring micro-lots from Alonso Sustuma Micro Lot 1, Pablo Herrera Micro Lot 1, and Rivier Cuchumbe Micro Lot 1.


Ethiopia:
As many of you have likely seen, Ethiopia is in a disturbing civil war in the Northern Region of Tigray. For clarification, we work in the south of Ethiopia which is far away from the war, but it's bad news regardless. Our Ethiopian coffees are sailing towards us at this moment with our first arrivals starting to hit the USA during the second week of July. We likely won’t clear customs in time for a release of new crop coffees before the end of July, but they are coming. In the roastery, we have about one week of Chelchele Natural 221 left in the lineup and for the short moment of maybe 3 weeks, we won’t have a single origin Ethiopian offering in the lineup. Ethiopia is our best-selling single-origin coffee so I know many of you will be sad for a few weeks. Sorry guys, but let’s remember that coffee is a seasonal fruit harvested on the other side of the world and it takes time to make the epic journey.


Kenya:
Our 2021 Kenya coffees land in the USA this week! We are excited to get into these beauties but we will need a little more time to get through customs, possible inspections, and finally trucked up from California to our facility. I’m hopeful that we will have our first offerings from Kenya in July. This year we have partnered with Long Miles Coffee to source, and manage farmers' selection, processing, and drying quality control from the following Othaya Cooperative coffee factories: Gatugi, Gatuyaini, Karuthi, Kiaga, Mahiga, and Rukira. We have micro-lot selections of Peaberries, AB’s, and AA's.


El Salvador:
At this point, all our El Salvador offerings have left the country and are on their way. We were able to source 100% of our contracted volumes for the year! It was looking a little short for a moment but a wave of pre-shipment samples from long-term producer partners flooded in with high approval results. Some of our El Salvador offerings are already in the country. Our blend La Palma from the farmers we work with in La Palma, Chalatenango, and my personal favorite Melvin Flores Micro Lot is in the building here in Olympia. The first roast of Melvins’ coffee is on July 6th. Otherwise, we have the remaining dozen or so lots on the water moving towards us. We missed a shipment headed for Seattle and another for LA so we had to book the last boat out to Houston, from there we will need to truck it up to our warehouse in Fife, WA. Also, a quick mention that our friend and farmer partners the Ariz Family won 18th place in the El Salvador Cup of Excellence!


Guatemala:
Guatemala’s Cup of Excellence took place just a couple of weeks ago. Our longest-standing partner farmer Juan Diego De La Cerda from El Socorro won 2nd place with his Gesha! Hint - you will also get a chance to enjoy this coffee this year as it’s currently on the water sailing towards us with the other Guatemalan offerings. This year will bring the return of our wide selections from Guatemala including El Socorro and coffees from our El Templo project, which is centered out of Huehuetenango from small-scale indigenous farmers. All these coffees should arrive in the USA in July and be set to be on the menu around August. So many coffees!


Peru:
We have moved into our third year of sourcing in Peru and it’s definitely been challenging to develop this program while COVID has not allowed for travel. Honestly, despite this things are moving forward like clockwork. The harvest in Peru has peaked this month. We continue to put our efforts into the beautiful southern region of Peru around the ancient city of Cusco. Early Fall we will likely begin cupping and select our lots for the year, we have contracted these coffees to arrive at our roastery in January of 2022.


Hawaii:
I hope you had a chance to try our first offering from Hawaii last month? Don’t miss our upcoming offering, my personal favorite from Monarch btw. Hawaii Monarch Kona Natural Pacamara Carbonic Maceration. It’s a mouthful in more than just name. This coffee is exclusively grown and processed for Olympia Coffee. It’s about as bespoke as it gets. This lot will go on sale on July 8th in the morning. Sign up for our newsletter and you get a link about 10 minutes before it’s available to others. With only 25 boxes available I imagine we will sell out in just a few minutes. No seriously.


Mexico:
Some bad news. Our Mexican coffee from producer Felix Morales rose outside of acceptable water activity and has been rejected. Higher water activity coffee will be volatile and lose quality with a loss of organic material flavor, aka “baggy”. We are obsessive about water activity and never take risks bringing in coffees outside of our strict parameters. So, back to the drawing board. At this point, we won’t likely have an offering from Mexico as planned this year.


Burundi:
Burundi harvest continues this month. We have kept going with our focus on Mikuba and Gitwe Hills, processed at the Heza washing station. In a couple of months post-harvest, we will begin the process of selecting our favorite lots from the harvest. This coffee will likely arrive in January of 2022. For now, though, we have just a couple of lots left in stock from the last harvest. Gitwe Honey Micro Lot 2. By the end of the first week of July, we are on to our last Long Miles Burundi, the Mikuba Honey Micro Lot 2. It’s been a great year in Burundi!

 
 

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